Continuing Prevention of Animal Cruelty Month!

Harmless and innocent frogs are kept alive in a kitchen until someone places an order for Sashimi. A frog is then stabbed by a chef's knife and stripped clean of its inedible innards. Sadly, the frog is still alive when it's served on an iced platter, and it's forced to watch a costumer eat their insides. After the insides are eaten, the rest of the frog is simmered to make a soup.

Nobody would want to experience something as cruel and inhumane as this, so how can we allow this to continue to innocent frogs any longer?

April is Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Month, and each year, the ASPCA urges supporters across the country to support their efforts and Go Orange for Animals in honor of the signing of the ASPCA's charter in 1866. Throughout the month, members should show their support by donning the signature color and going orange for animals. Please join us for this month-long celebration of our victories in the fight against animal cruelty.

After honoring younger and lesser-known figures in recent years -- including 49-year-old Chinese architect Wang Shu in 2012 -- the Pritzker jury this year chose a well-established architect with 40 years of built work to his credit. For at least a decade Ito has been a presumed Pritzker front-runner.

Along with Tadao Ando, the 1995 Pritzker laureate, the 71-year-old Ito is the dean of Japanese architecture, though with his mop of black hair he looks many years younger. He is best known for his 2001 Sendai Mediatheque, a seven-story glass box of a building that was dramatically shaken, though only lightly damaged, by the Tohoku earthquake two years ago.

Like much of his work, it distills a series of complex technical breakthroughs into a spare, even-keeled finished product. The Mediatheque's structural and electrical systems are bundled inside 13 vertical tubes, leaving library and exhibition spaces open and accessible from all sides and visible from the street through floor-to-ceiling glass.

Ito has designed museums, stadiums, houses and commercial buildings across Japan. His largest and most ambitious project to date, the 620,000 square-foot Taichung Metropolitan Opera House, is under construction in Taiwan and due to open next year.

He has also been a teacher and mentor to many Japanese architects. Two former associates in his office, Ryue Nishizawa and Kazuyo Sejima, who run the firm SANAA, were the joint Pritzker winners in 2010. Recently Ito has been working with a group of Tokyo architects in their 40s to develop community centers for sections of northeast Japan hit hard by the earthquake and tsunami.

In a Skype interview from his Tokyo office, Ito expressed surprise at the news. “After a Chinese architect won last year and SANAA three years ago, I did not expect it would be me this time,” he said.

Continue reading at www.latimes.com

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